Appaloosa

7

Mrs. French played the piano very badly, but she played loud, and she was pretty and she smiled nice and wore dresses with a low neck and generated considerable heat and mostly nobody noticed. During her break she came over and sat at a table with me. I was drinking coffee.

I said, “Care for a drink, Mrs. French?”

“No, but I’ll have some coffee with you,” she said. “And, please, call me Allie.”

I nodded at Tilda and she came over with coffee for Allie, and a second cup for me.

“Have you known Mr. Cole for long, Mr. Hitch?”

“Call me Everett, and I’m pretty sure you should call Mr. Cole Virgil.”

She smiled and looked down. The gesture looked practiced. Probably was.

“Have you known Virgil long, Everett?” she said.

“Yes.”

“And have you and he always been marshals here?”

“No. We just arrived couple weeks ago,” I said.

“Where were you before?”

“We been all over out here,” I said. “Virgil gets hired to settle things down in towns that need settling, and I go with him, and after the town gets settled, then we move on and find another town that needs settling.”

“Are you what they call ‘town tamers’?” she said.

“If you read those dime novels.”

“What do you call yourselves?” she said.

“Don’t know as we ever have,” I said.

“Do you kill people?”

“Now and then,” I said.

“Many?”

Her eyes were up now and on me. It was always about the killing. I’d met a lot of women who were fascinated with the killing. They were horrified, too, but it was more than that.

“A few,” I said.

“And Virgil?”

“More than a few,” I said.

“What’s it like?”

“It’s like driving a nail,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Driving a nail, splitting firewood. It’s work. It’s quick.”

“No more than that?”

“Not after you’ve done it a couple times.”

“Do you like it?”

“Well, it’s kind of clean and complete,” I said. “You got him, he didn’t get you.”

“But, if you feel that way,” she was frowning, thinking about it, interested, “what’s to prevent you from just killing anyone you feel like?”

“The law,” I said. “Virgil always says, people obey the law, you don’t have a reason to kill them.”

“Any law?”

“Don’t get to complicating it,” I said.

“You know which law,” she said.

“We do.”

I liked how she was interested. How she hadn’t decided what she thought before we started talking.

“How about the other people, the people you shoot?”

“Virgil always posts the laws,” I said. “In any town we work.”

She drank her coffee, looking at me while she did.

“What if they kill you?”

“Hard thing to plan for,” I said.

“Do you think about it?”

“Try not to,” I said.

Neither of us said anything for a while. Tilda came over and poured us more coffee.

“I guess I disapprove,” Allie said.

I nodded.

“But I know I don’t know enough about it, really,” she said. “You seem like a nice man, and so does Mr. Cole, Virgil.”

“I’m pretty nice,” I said. “I’m not so sure ’bout Virgil.”

“Are either of you married?”

“I’m not,” I said.

“And, Mr… Virgil?”

“Not that I know about.”

“But you’re his closest friend-wouldn’t you know?”

“Virgil don’t tell you much,” I said.

“Really? He seemed so talkative in the restaurant,” Allie said.

“Oh, he’s talkative. Talks a lot of the time. He just don’t tell you much.”

“Well,” she said. “I’m going to ask him.”